Yes, these WWI-era facial prosthetics are real — but the sculptor credited for the work didn't do it alone

For years, images purporting to show World War I-era prosthetic masks created by sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd for soldiers disfigured in battle have circulated online. 

Pictures alleging to show the people who benefited from her work were posted on X, Facebook and even Pinterest. These pictures often show up on Reddit: Posts from 2023, 2021, 2020 and 2015 all received tens of thousands of views each. One post from March 2025 said Ladd's creations were "worn by wounded soldiers with life changes injuries and thus enabled them to integrate back into society without feeling they ought to hide from public view." 

These images depict authentic masks made for soldiers disfigured during World War I. However, while many posts attribute the masks solely to Ladd, the sculptor worked with an entire team at the Studio for Portrait Masks in France, which means many of the masks were not made by Ladd alone. It is true, though, that Ladd led and founded the studio. Thus, we rate this claim mostly true.

Real prosthetic masks 

Images of the prosthetics and World War I soldiers before and after a mask fitting are available in the Library of Congress' archives gifted by the American Red Cross, which helped oversee and finance the Studio for Portrait Masks; Ladd was a volunteer with the Red Cross. There are also images of Ladd working on the masks or with her patients. The images referenced in the post above are available in the archives here, here, here and here. 

Anna Coleman Ladd working on a mask for a patient.  (Library of Congress)

Furthermore, the Smithsonian has extensive documentation of the Studio for Portrait Masks' existence, including scrapbooks with letters from patients and doctors and additional photographs of soldiers with and without the prosthetic masks. The documents also include a detailed description of how the prosthetics were made at British sculptor Francis Derwent Wood's Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department, which Ladd was inspired by: 

What exactly happens to the man who goes into that room with a gargoyle face and, a week or two later, after various processes, is able to emerge with a face which at a few years' distance is almost a replica of the one he wore before he was wounded?

[...]

The patient's face is prepared for moulding. He has lost, perhaps, one eye, a slice of the adjacent cheek, and the top part of the nose. In such a case the whole of the upper half of the face, including the entire nose and the surviving eye, must be moulded. It is first painted over with oil. The eyebrows are smeared with vaseline.

The document, titled "THE MEN WITH NEW FACES," goes on to explain the process of creating a mask using a thin sheet of galvanized copper painted with hard flesh-toned enamel — the same method used by Ladd's studio (see Page 6). 

At the Studio for Portrait Masks, masks were painted while the soldier was wearing them and real hair was used to create the eyebrows, eyelashes and mustaches. Each mask took about a month to produce, according to the Smithsonian. Spectacles attached to the mask or spirit-gum, a costume adhesive, held the mask in place (Page 8).

Like many on modern-day social media, the author of the 1917 paper also marveled at how the masks allowed patients to reenter public life: "Figure what this means to the patient! Instead of being a gargoyle, ashamed to show himself on the streets, he is almost a normal human being and can go anywhere unafraid — unafraid (a happy release!) of seeing others unafraid" (Page 10). 

The team behind the Studio for Portrait Masks 

Ladd led and founded the Studio for Portrait Masks, where her work was done; as a volunteer with the American Red Cross, she founded the studio, "financing it primarily with her own money," according to Columbia University. The studio was up and running by January 1918 under the guidance of the Red Cross. 

The Library of Congress archives credit only "Anna Coleman Ladd" for many of the masks. However, the Smithsonian noted that Ladd worked with "a group of dedicated helpers" to create the masks and in some images, the Library of Congress' caption either acknowledged that an "assistant" was working on the masks at Ladd's studio or showed someone who was not Ladd fitting masks on patients.

According to Columbia University, which owns the building where the Studio for Portrait Masks once resided in Paris, at least three other artists worked alongside Ladd: two celebrated French sculptors, Jane Poupelet and Robert Wlérick, and French-American sculptor Marie Louise Brent, who took over at the studio when Ladd returned to America. Diana Blair, curator of specimens at the Harvard Medical Laboratory, also worked at the studio.

"The work of the studio was very much a team effort, making it difficult to attribute any one mask to a specific individual," said Brunhilde Biebuyck, Columbia University's director of the Global Paris Center based in Reid Hall — where the studio once resided. 

Poupelet, who met Ladd through the American Red Cross and joined the studio a few months after its founding, helped with both the masks and the business side of the studio. She suggested bringing in Wlérick, a friend of hers who had worked in a facial surgical unit, and he also worked in a dual capacity for about a year. Biebuyck said her research, which focused on American Red Cross documents and the Ladd papers at the Smithsonian, found no confirmation that Brent, who joined in September 1918 as the studio's secretary, participated in mask production. However, the Library of Congress does have an image of a mask made in 1919 which is credited as "made by Miss Marie Louise Brent."

"It's difficult to explain why their stories have been left out," Biebuyck said, via email, of the other artists' work at the Studio for Portrait Masks. She noted Poupelet and Wlérick were largely silent about their World War I work. In contrast, Ladd traveled throughout France and identified wounded soldiers to refer to the studio alongside doctors, resulting in a higher profile. (Those soldiers were often received by the other artists, as Ladd spent much of her time working in the field.)